Naoto hunched his shoulders, head down as he navigated the crowded hallway. Bodies pressed past him—loud voices, laughter that never seemed directed at him but somehow always felt like it was. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed in that particular way that made his temples ache.
All I need to do is push through this moment. I just have to make it to the library, and everything will be alright.
His fingers twitched against the strap of his bag where his sketchbook sat, the weight of it a small comfort. He adjusted his glasses by the bridge, a nervous habit he'd never quite broken, and quickened his pace.
The other students seemed to part around him without really seeing him. A kind of social invisibility he'd cultivated over years of being the target. Better to be overlooked than noticed. Better to fade into the walls than give anyone a reason to—
He rounded the corner and the library door came into view. Relief flooded through him, cool and immediate.
Thank god.
But when he pushed through the door, the quiet sanctuary he'd been counting on didn't greet him. Instead, a cluster of girls had taken up residence near the windows—four or five of them, their voices pitched in that particular frequency that made something in his chest tighten. They sprawled across chairs with their skirts riding up their thighs, ties loosened, blazers discarded. The afternoon sun caught on glossy lips and the curves of calves, the dip of collarbones above partially unbuttoned shirts.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
Naoto's grip tightened on his bag. His pulse kicked up, blood rushing in his ears. For a moment he considered just turning around, finding somewhere else to hide for the next hour, but—
No. Don't run, he told himself. Just... don't let them see you.
He moved with deliberate care toward the far corner of the library, keeping his head down, his footfalls soft. The girls' laughter rose and fell like waves, none of it directed at him. Good. Perfect. Exactly how he wanted it.
He found a table tucked away behind the reference section, half-hidden by shelving units and far enough from the windows that the girls wouldn't have any reason to notice him. The chair scraped as he pulled it out—too loud—but when he glanced toward them they were still absorbed in whatever gossip had them giggling.
Naoto breathed a sigh of relief at that and sank into the seat and immediately pulled out his sketchbook, flipping it open to the page he'd been working on yesterday. Siegfried's proportions still looked off around the shoulders, the armor plating not quite sitting right. He clicked his mechanical pencil, the sound sharp and grounding, and bent over the page.
The familiar scratch of graphite against paper settled something deep in his chest, each stroke a small comfort that loosened the knot of tension coiled beneath his ribs.
From across the room, one of the girls laughed—bright and genuine—and Naoto's hand stilled for just a moment. He didn't look up. Couldn't. But his mind supplied the image anyway: flushed cheeks, parted lips, the way fabric pulled tight across—
He adjusted his glasses again and forced his attention back to Siegfried's shoulder guards. The curve of the metal needed to follow the deltoid more naturally, had to look like it could actually articulate with the breastplate...
Another burst of laughter. Closer this time?
Naoto hunched further over his work, making himself smaller. His ears burned. God, why were they so loud? Every giggle seemed to echo off the library's high ceilings, every word just intelligible enough to be distracting without being clear.
The graphite glided across the page with practiced ease, each stroke bringing Siegfried's armor into sharper focus. Naoto's breathing had steadied, the tension in his shoulders slowly unwinding as he lost himself in the familiar rhythm of creation. The shoulder guards finally looked right—the curve following the natural line of muscle beneath, the articulation points positioned where they'd actually allow movement.
He flipped to a fresh page, mind already racing ahead to the next panel. Elizabeth would appear here, her sword drawn, that fierce determination in her eyes that he could never quite capture as perfectly as he imagined it. His pencil moved almost of its own accord, sketching the basic shapes first—the oval of her face, the sweep of her hair, the proud set of her shoulders.
This could work. This could actually work.
The background noise of the girls' conversation had faded to a pleasant hum, meaningless and unthreatening. Just white noise. His world had narrowed to the page in front of him, the weight of the pencil between his fingers, the satisfying scratch of lead on paper.
He didn't notice when the laughter across the room shifted in quality. Didn't register the soft footsteps approaching from behind. Didn't feel the subtle displacement of air as someone leaned in close—
"Whatcha drawing?"
The voice came from directly over his shoulder, warm breath ghosting across his ear.
Naoto's entire body seized. His hand jerked violently, the pencil scoring a dark line across Elizabeth's half-formed face. He twisted in his seat, heart slamming against his ribs, and his elbow caught the edge of his sketchbook. Papers scattered like startled birds—loose sketches he'd tucked between the pages, reference drawings, half-finished panels flying in every direction.
"Whoa!" The girl behind him stepped back, hands raised, eyes wide with surprise that quickly melted into amusement. She was close—too close—her body mere inches from where he'd been sitting. The top two buttons of her blouse hung open, revealing the soft swell of her chest and the lacy edge of something pink beneath. Her skirt had ridden up from the way she'd been leaning, the hem barely covering the curve of her thighs.
Naoto's face went nuclear. He scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking the chair over, his glasses sliding down his nose. "I—I wasn't—that's not—"
But she'd already bent down to pick up one of the fallen pages—the one he'd just been working on, Elizabeth's ruined face staring up from the paper. Her lips pressed together, shoulders shaking slightly.
No no no no—
"Oh my god." The laugh escaped her in a strangled burst, like she'd been trying to hold it in and failed spectacularly. "Guys, you have to come see this!"
The other girls perked up immediately, drawn by the promise of entertainment. They rose from their chairs in a wave of rustling fabric and clicking heels, crossing the library with the casual confidence of predators who'd spotted prey. Naoto stood frozen, his papers scattered at his feet like evidence of some shameful crime.
"What is it, what is it?" A shorter girl with twin-tails bounced on her heels, craning her neck to see. Her friend—taller, with a beauty mark near her lip—snatched the page before anyone else could claim it.
"Is this supposed to be a knight?" Beauty Mark's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "What's wrong with her face?"
"I-I was still working on it—" Naoto's voice came out thin and reedy. His hands hung uselessly at his sides, fingers twitching with the urge to grab his drawing back.
"And look at these proportions!" The first girl had gathered more of his scattered pages, rifling through them with zero regard for his dignity. "Her boobs are massive compared to her waist. There's no way a real person could look like this."
Twin-tails dissolved into giggles. "That's so gross! Is this what you think women look like?"
"N-no, it's just—it's a stylistic choice, it's how manga—"
"Oh my god, he draws manga." Beauty Mark said the word like it was something contagious. "That explains so much."
They crowded around the stolen pages, their bodies pressing close as they examined his work with mocking fascination. They went through his work page by page, dissecting each drawing with cruel precision, but he was too terrified to move or utter a single protest.
More laughter. Louder now, bouncing off the library walls. Naoto's vision swam, heat prickling behind his eyes in a way that made his stomach clench with humiliation.
"What a creep," Twin-tails snickered. "Drawing stuff like this at school. What if someone saw?"
"Someone did see," Beauty Mark pointed out, which only made them laugh harder.
The feeding frenzy had taken on a life of its own, the other girls finding new pages to mock, new aspects of his art to tear apart.
Naoto stood paralyzed, face burning, papers scattered around him like fallen leaves. His glasses had slipped down his nose again but he couldn't make himself reach up to fix them. Couldn't make himself move at all.
Just let it pass. Just let it pass. They'll get bored eventually. They always do.
And they did.
A phone buzzed—sharp and insistent—and the first girl fished it from her pocket with practiced ease. Her eyes scanned the screen, expression shifting from amusement to interest.
"Oh shit, Takeda's at the vending machines." She was already moving, shoving his pages carelessly onto the nearest table. "Come on, let's go."
The others fell in behind her without question, their attention shifting to this new entertainment as quickly as it had latched onto him. Twin-tails grabbed Beauty Mark's arm, already chattering about whoever Takeda was, and within seconds they were a retreating wave of swishing skirts and clicking heels.
"Later, manga boy!" one of them called over her shoulder, which earned another burst of giggles that echoed even after the library door swung shut behind them.
Silence.
Naoto stood frozen for another ten seconds, fifteen, until his lungs remembered how to function. The first breath came out shaky, the second slightly steadier. His hands trembled as he pushed his glasses back up his nose, the familiar gesture grounding him in the aftermath.
It's over. They're gone. It's fine.
He dropped to his knees and started gathering his scattered pages, movements jerky and uncoordinated. Some had landed face-up, others face-down, and he couldn't bring himself to look at them as he shuffled them into a messy pile. The paper crinkled under his fingers, edges bent and creased from careless handling.
Should have been more careful. Should have found somewhere else. Should have—
His hand closed around a page half-hidden under the table leg, and he paused to take another steadying breath. The heat in his face was finally beginning to fade, leaving behind a hollow, exhausted feeling that settled into his bones.
Just get your things and go. Find somewhere else. The roof, maybe, or—
Movement flickered in his peripheral vision.
Naoto's head snapped up, heart lurching back into overdrive, and he realized with a sickening jolt that he wasn't alone.
One of the girls had stayed.
She stood a few feet away, leaning against the edge of a bookshelf with casual indifference, a page from his sketchbook held loosely between her fingers. She wasn't looking at him—not yet—her attention fixed on whatever drawing she'd claimed for herself.
Naoto's mouth went dry.
She was small—shorter than the others by a good margin—but something about the way she held herself made that fact seem irrelevant. Her frame was lean and athletic, the kind of body that spoke of hours spent in motion rather than lounging around. The white button-up of her uniform hung open at the collar, sleeves rolled carelessly to her elbows, and her navy skirt sat just high enough on her thighs to make his face heat all over again.
But it was her skin that caught him first. Tanned. Deeply, beautifully tanned, like summer had kissed her and never quite let go. The warm bronze of her complexion stood out against the white of her shirt, made her seem almost luminous in the afternoon light filtering through the library windows.
Long black hair fell straight down her back, pinned to one side with a pair of simple white clips. A metallic piercing glinted at the upper curve of her right ear, catching the light when she tilted her head. Her nails—he noticed because she was drumming them against the edge of his stolen page—were painted a deep, arterial red.
Give it back, he wanted to say. The words lodged in his throat like stones.
She still hadn't looked at him. Her eyes—large and expressive, somewhere between amber and maroon—remained fixed on whatever drawing she held. One corner of her mouth twitched. Then twitched again.
Naoto's stomach dropped.
When she finally raised her head, the smirk that spread across her face was nothing short of predatory. It pulled at her lips in a way that revealed teeth—specifically, a pair of prominent canines that gave her grin something almost feral. One of her pupils seemed to widen slightly, the asymmetry of it making her expression even more unsettling.
"So," she said, and her voice was lighter than he'd expected, almost musical. "This is what you've been hiding back here, huh?"
She flipped the page around so he could see it.
His breath caught. Of all the drawings she could have grabbed, it had to be that one—a figure study he'd been practicing late one night, a woman in armor with the breastplate hanging open, the suggestion of curves and shadows that he'd been too embarrassed to finish properly.
"I-I can explain—"
"Big knockers." She tapped a red nail against the offending anatomy. "Really big. Like, ridiculously big." Her smirk widened, those sharp canines flashing. "You drew these at school? That's pretty perverted, Senpai."
The honorific caught him off guard. They'd never spoken before—he was certain of it, he would have remembered those eyes, that grin—so why was she calling him that?
"I'm not—it's not what you—" He scrambled to his feet, knees protesting from the hard library floor. "That's just a study, it's for anatomy practice, I was trying to learn how to draw the female form and—"
"The female form," she repeated, drawing the words out like they were coated in honey. Her eyebrows arched. "Is that what you call it?"
She took a step closer. Then another. The space between them shrank with each movement, and Naoto found himself backing up until his shoulders hit the edge of a bookshelf. His scattered pages crunched under his heel.
"Please give that back," he managed, voice barely above a whisper.
"Hmm." She held the page up, examining it with exaggerated scrutiny. "I don't know. This seems like important evidence. Evidence that some gross, perverted senpai has been sitting in the corner of the library drawing pornography."
"It's not pornography!"
"No?" One eyebrow climbed higher. "Then why are you so red?"
Because she was close. Too close. Near enough that he could smell something faintly sweet—perfume or shampoo or maybe just the natural scent of sun-warmed skin. Near enough that the gap in her collar revealed the delicate architecture of her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat where a fine sheen of perspiration caught the light.
His glasses were fogging up. Actually fogging up from the heat radiating off his face.
"You're sweating," she observed, delighted. "Oh my god, you're actually sweating. Are you that nervous right now?"
"I—you're standing very close—"
"Am I?" She leaned in further, and now he could see the light catching on her piercing, could count the individual lashes framing those unnerving amber-maroon eyes. "Is that a problem for you, Senpai? Does having a girl in your personal space make you uncomfortable?"
Yes, he wanted to scream. Yes, it absolutely does, please step back, please—
"Your ears are red too." Her gaze traveled down to his collar, and the smirk sharpened. "I bet if I undid a few of these buttons, you'd be red all the way down."
His hand flew to his collar on instinct, fumbling to make sure every button was still secure. She laughed—bright and genuine and utterly merciless—the sound bouncing off the library's high ceilings.
"Relax, I'm not going to strip you." She finally stepped back, and the sudden absence of her proximity left him dizzy.
She was still holding his drawing. Her thumb traced idle circles over the edge of the page, nail scraping softly against the paper.
"So what's the deal with this guy?" She bent down—casual, deliberate—and plucked another page from the scattered mess at their feet. Her skirt rode up as she crouched, fabric pulling taut across her thighs, and Naoto's gaze jerked away so fast his neck cracked.
The girl straightened with fluid grace, holding the new page up to the light. Her eyes scanned across it, that predatory grin still playing at her lips. "Wait. Wait wait wait."
She turned the page toward him. Siegfried stared back, noble and determined, his sword raised against some unseen enemy. One of his better pieces, actually—the armor had come out right, the proportions balanced, the expression conveying exactly the kind of heroic resolve he'd been aiming for.
"This protagonist." She tapped the drawing with one red nail. "He looks... familiar."
Naoto's stomach sank.
"The hair's a little different." She tilted her head, studying the page with exaggerated thoughtfulness. "And I guess he's got more muscle definition than certain person I could mention. But these eyes? This chin?" Her gaze flicked between the drawing and his face, back and forth, her grin spreading wider with each pass. "Oh my god. Oh my god."
"It's not—"
"This is you!" She burst out laughing, the sound sharp and delighted. "You drew yourself! You actually drew yourself as the cool protagonist with the sword and the—" She squinted at the page. "—'legendary blade of destiny' or whatever edgy nonsense this is!"
Heat flooded his face, burning from his cheeks down to his collar. "He's not supposed to be me, he's just—the designs are based on a reference model—"
"A reference model." She was practically vibrating with glee now. "Did you pose in front of a mirror for this? Did you flex and pretend you had muscles?"
"No!"
"Because that's what it looks like." She held the page at arm's length, making a show of comparing it to him. "Same dopey expression. Same wimpy build under all that fantasy armor. This is like the most embarrassing self-insert I've ever seen."
The word hit him like a slap. Self-insert. God, was it that obvious? He'd tried to make Siegfried different enough, had given him broader shoulders, a stronger jawline, actual combat prowess instead of—
"And let me guess." She was on a roll now, flipping through more of his scattered pages, pulling out panels featuring Elizabeth. "This busty knight lady? She's your fantasy girlfriend, right? Your big-tiddy waifu who's totally into Definitely-Not-You despite him being a complete loser?"
"Elizabeth is a complex character with her own motivations—"
"Elizabeth." She snorted. "Of course her name is Elizabeth. That's so cringe."
His hands clenched at his sides. The familiar weight of shame pressed down on his shoulders, that old defense mechanism kicking in—the one that told him to just shut up, take it, let it wash over him until she got bored.
But this girl wasn't getting bored.
She'd found another page, this one showing Siegfried and Elizabeth standing back-to-back against a horde of enemies. The composition was actually decent, the action flowing naturally across the panel, but she didn't seem to care about any of that.
"Look at this!" She jabbed her finger at Siegfried's face. "He's even doing that thing you do with your glasses! That nervous little adjustment!" She mimed pushing up invisible frames on her nose, her expression shifting into an exaggerated parody of anxiety. "Oh no, I'm so weak and pathetic, please don't notice me while I draw myself as a badass swordsman!"
"I don't sound like that—"
"You kind of do, though." Her grin was absolutely merciless, those canines on full display. "This whole thing is just wish fulfillment, isn't it? You sitting alone in your room imagining what it would be like if you weren't such a sad, gross virgin with no friends."
The words landed like physical blows. His throat tightened, something hot and humiliating prickling behind his eyes. He adjusted his glasses—couldn't help it, the habit too ingrained—and her laugh rang out again.
"You just did the thing! The exact thing from your manga!" She was practically doubled over now, shoulders shaking. "Oh god, this is too good. This is the best thing I've found all week."
Naoto's vision swam slightly. He stared at the floor, at his scattered drawings lying there like evidence of everything pathetic about him. The graphite smudges on his fingers. The callus on his middle finger from holding a pencil for hours. All those nights spent alone in his room, pouring himself into these pages because at least there he could be something more than—
"And you brought these to school." Her voice cut through his spiraling thoughts. "You brought your cringy self-insert fantasy to school where anyone could see them. That's honestly impressive. Like, impressively stupid."
She crouched down again, gathering more of his pages with casual cruelty. Each one she picked up revealed another aspect of his work—action scenes, character studies, the careful worldbuilding he'd spent months developing. She shuffled through them like they were nothing.
"Does anyone else know about this?" She glanced up at him, that shit-eating grin never faltering. "Have you shown your 'epic manga' to other people? Or are you too embarrassed because you know it's garbage?"
His jaw clenched. "It's not garbage."
"Really?" She stood, holding the stack of his drawings like a deck of cards. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like the kind of thing a lonely virgin draws when he can't get a real girlfriend, Senpai."
The word—that honorific—had been rattling around in his skull since she'd first said it. It didn't make sense. They'd never spoken before, never even crossed paths that he could remember, and yet she wielded it with such casual familiarity, like she'd been calling him that for years.
"Why..." His voice came out scratchy, uncertain. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Why are you calling me that?"
"Calling you what?" She cocked her head, that predatory grin never wavering.
"Senpai." The word felt strange on his tongue when directed at himself. "You keep calling me senpai, but we've never—"
"Oh!" Her eyes lit up with fresh amusement. "You mean you haven't figured it out yet?" She took a step closer, and he resisted the urge to back up again. "You are a second year, right?"
The question caught him off guard. "I—yes? But what does that—"
"Then that settles it." She straightened up, chest puffing out slightly with satisfaction. The movement made her partially unbuttoned collar gap wider, revealing more of that sun-bronzed skin. "I'm a first year. Which makes you..." She paused, letting the word hang in the air between them. "My sen-pai."
The way she said it made his stomach flip. Not the respectful, distant way underclassmen usually addressed their upperclassmen. No, she drew the word out—"sen-pai"—her tongue curling around each syllable like she was tasting something sweet. Her voice dropped lower, taking on a breathy quality that seemed to fill the entire space between them.
Heat exploded across Naoto's face. His ears burned, his neck burned, even his scalp felt like it was on fire. The blush spread down past his collar, exactly like she'd predicted earlier, and her eyes tracked its progress with obvious delight.
"Oh my god." Her laugh came out in a delighted burst. "Look at you! You turned into a tomato!"
"I didn't—you can't just—" He fumbled for words, glasses sliding down his nose again. His hands shook as he pushed them back up.
"Can't just what?" She leaned in, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating off her skin. "Call you what you are? You're my senpai, aren't you?" She said it again, slower this time, each syllable dripping with something that made his brain short-circuit. "Sen... pai..."
"Stop that!" The words burst out before he could stop them.
"Stop what?" Her grin widened, those prominent canines catching the light. "I'm just being respectful to my upperclassman. Isn't that what good kohai are supposed to do?" She brought one hand up to her mouth in mock innocence, but her eyes sparkled with malicious glee. "Unless... does it make you uncomfortable when I call you senpai?"
"You're saying it weird!"
"Am I?" She tilted her head, letting her hair fall across one shoulder. "I don't know what you mean, Sen-pai. I think I'm saying it perfectly normally."
She definitely wasn't. The way the word rolled off her tongue had nothing to do with proper honorifics and everything to do with making him squirm. Each time she said it felt like fingers trailing down his spine, intimate and invasive and completely inappropriate for a library setting.
"Your face is getting redder." She pointed at him with one of those red-painted nails. "Are you sure you're okay? You look like you might pass out."
"I'm fine—"
"Really? Because you're sweating again." She stepped even closer, near enough that her breath ghosted across his overheated skin. "And your hands are shaking. And you keep adjusting those stupid glasses." Her gaze dropped to his mouth. "Even your lips are red. That's kind of impressive, actually. I didn't know people could blush everywhere."
Naoto's back hit the bookshelf again. He hadn't realized he'd been retreating, but now there was nowhere left to go. She stood directly in front of him, one hand braced against the shelf beside his head, effectively caging him in.
"What's wrong, Senpai?" The word came out as barely more than a purr. "Cat got your tongue?"
"Please—" His voice cracked embarrassingly. "Please stop—"
"Stop what? Talking to you?" Her free hand came up to tap his chest, right over his frantically beating heart. "But we're just getting to know each other! You're my senpai, after all. Shouldn't we be... closer?"
The double meaning in that last word wasn't lost on him. His vision blurred slightly at the edges, overwhelmed by her proximity, her scent, the casual cruelty in her eyes that told him she knew exactly what she was doing to him.
"Look at you." Her voice softened, but not with kindness—with the satisfied purr of a cat that had finally cornered a mouse. "You're actually tearing up. Are you gonna cry, Senpai? Are you gonna cry because some girl is paying attention to you?"
"I'm not—" But his voice hitched, betraying him.
"You are!" She gasped in mock concern, though her grin never faltered. "Oh my god, you're actually crying! That's so pathetic!" Her nail dragged down his chest, not hard enough to hurt but firm enough to feel through his shirt. "What kind of second-year cries just from being teased a little?"
"You're not—this isn't just—" The words tangled in his throat. Moisture gathered at the corners of his eyes, hot and humiliating.
"Aw, poor Senpai." She leaned back just enough to get a better view of his face, her expression alight with cruel fascination. "Can't handle a little attention from a cute kouhai? That's really, really sad." She said his title again, drawing it out obscenely. "Sen-pai..."
A tear broke free, sliding down his burning cheek.
Her eyes widened with genuine surprise for just a moment before her grin returned, somehow even more wicked than before. "You actually did it. You actually cried." She laughed—bright and merciless. "This is amazing. I barely even had to try!"
Another tear followed the first. Then another. His vision swam completely now, the humiliation too much to contain. He couldn't even bring himself to look at her anymore, couldn't stand to see the satisfaction in those amber-maroon eyes.
"This is the best," she breathed, and there was something almost reverent in her tone beneath the mockery. "You're like a crying virgin little crybaby wrapped up in one gross package."
The world had narrowed to the burning shame behind his closed eyelids, the hot tracks of tears on his cheeks, the sharp edge of her laughter cutting through him. Naoto squeezed his eyes tighter, trying to will himself somewhere else, anywhere else—
Warmth bloomed against his cheek.
Soft. Wet. The unmistakable press of lips against his tear-stained skin.
His eyes flew open.
She was right there—her face inches from his, close enough that he could see the tiny flecks of gold in her amber-maroon irises, could feel her breath mingling with his. Her lips had just left his cheek, and they were curved in that same predatory smile, glistening slightly.
"Wh—what—" His voice came out as a strangled whisper.
"Mm." She licked her lips, slow and deliberate, like she was savoring something. "Salty."
Heat detonated in his chest, spreading outward in waves that made his entire body feel like it was combusting. His face went beyond red—past crimson, approaching something that defied the visible spectrum. The blush crawled down his neck, beneath his collar, spreading across skin that had never known such mortification.
He jerked backward on pure instinct, shoulder blades slamming against the bookshelf hard enough to rattle the volumes behind him. But before he could twist away, before he could put any real distance between them—
Her arms locked around him.
Not gently. Not tentatively. She moved with the quick, decisive confidence of someone who'd grappled before, her forearms crossing behind his back and pulling him flush against her. The softness of her chest pressed against his ribs, separated only by the thin layers of their uniforms.
"Where do you think you're going, Senpai?" Her voice was muffled against his shoulder, warm breath seeping through the fabric of his shirt.
He tried to pull back, hands coming up to push against her shoulders—and discovered with dawning horror that he might as well have been pushing against a wall.
She didn't budge.
"What—let go—" His voice pitched higher, panic threading through the words. He was taller than her by a solid six inches, could see over the top of her head to where her long black hair fell down her back, but none of that mattered. His thin, bony arms had no leverage against the compact strength in her frame.
"Let go?" She tilted her head back to look up at him, chin resting against his chest. The angle made her grin even more unsettling. "But I just caught you. It'd be such a waste to let you run away now."
"I'm not—this isn't—" He twisted, trying to create space, but her grip only tightened. The lean muscle in her arms flexed, and he felt the strength there—earned from athletics or martial arts or something he couldn't even imagine participating in. His struggles accomplished exactly nothing.
"Wow." Her eyes went wide with delight. "You really are weak, aren't you? Like, actually pathetic-level weak." She shifted her hold experimentally, and his attempt to resist might as well have been a butterfly beating against glass. "I knew you looked like a bean sprout, but this is something else."
Fresh humiliation burned through him. He was a second-year. Older. Taller. Theoretically the one with authority in this dynamic. And yet here he was, completely immobilized by a first-year girl who barely came up to his chin.
"My arms—" She glanced down at where her forearms crossed behind his back, then back up at his burning face. "My arms completely wrap around you. Do you know how skinny you have to be for that?" She squeezed for emphasis, and he felt his ribs compress slightly. "I could probably snap you in half."
"Please—" His voice cracked again.
"Please what?" She pressed closer, eliminating what little space remained between their bodies. The warmth of her seeped through his uniform—her chest against his sternum, her stomach against his abdomen, her thighs brushing his. "Please stop pointing out how wimpy and gross you are?"
He could smell her now—something sweet and clean beneath the faint salt of exertion. Could feel the rise and fall of her breathing, the steady thump of her heartbeat against his frantic one. His hands hovered uselessly in the air, unsure where to land that wouldn't make this worse.
"Your heart's going crazy." She tilted her head, pressing her ear against his chest. "I can hear it. Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump." She tapped her fingers against his back in rhythm with his racing pulse. "Are you having a heart attack, Senpai? Should I call an ambulance?"
"I'm not—you're just—" Words failed him completely.
"Just what?" She looked up again, and the angle forced him to meet those unnerving amber-maroon eyes. "Just holding you? Just touching you?" Her grin sharpened. "Is that really all it takes to make you fall apart? A little bit of physical contact?"
"This isn't—people don't just—" He tried to twist away again, but she rode the movement easily, shifting her weight to keep him pinned against the bookshelf.
"People don't just what? Hug?" She pressed her cheek against his chest again, voice taking on that breathy quality that made his brain short-circuit. "But Senpai, you looked so sad and pathetic with those tears running down your face. I was just trying to comfort you."
"By—by licking my tears—"
"I didn't lick them." She sounded genuinely offended. "I kissed them away. There's a difference." Her arms tightened fractionally. "Though if you want me to lick you, I guess I could—"
"No!" The word burst out too loud, echoing off the library's high ceilings. He clamped his mouth shut, horrified at his own volume.
Her shoulders shook with silent laughter against him. "You're so easy to mess with. It's actually kind of adorable." She paused. "In a gross, perverted virgin kind of way."
The tears had stopped at least, shocked into submission by the sheer absurdity of his current situation. But his face still burned, his heart still raced, and her arms showed no signs of releasing him anytime soon.
"You know what I think?" She pulled back just enough to look up at him properly, though her arms remained locked around his waist. "I think you secretly like this."
"I don't—"
"Your body's being honest even if your mouth isn't, Senpai." One of her hands moved—not releasing him, just shifting to press her palm flat against his lower back. "You're shaking. You're blushing. You can't even look at me properly." Her grin turned absolutely wicked. "And you haven't actually pushed me away."
Because he couldn't. Because she was stronger than him and they both knew it. But saying that out loud would only make it worse.
"Face it." She rose up on her toes slightly, bringing her face closer to his. "You're completely at my mercy right now."
His throat closed around whatever protest he'd been trying to form. What emerged instead was a strangled, incoherent noise—half-gasp, half-whimper—that made her eyes light up with fresh delight.
"See?" She pressed impossibly closer, her weight settling against him until he could feel every curve of her body through their uniforms. "You can't even deny it properly. That's basically a confession, Senpai."
"N-no—I—" But his voice had abandoned him completely, reduced to broken syllables that scattered before they could become words.
She shifted her stance, one leg sliding forward between his, and the movement sent a jolt of sensation through his nervous system that made his knees weaken. His hands finally found purchase—grabbing onto her shoulders on pure instinct—but whether to push her away or keep himself upright, he genuinely couldn't say.
"There we go." Her grin widened at the contact, those canines flashing. "Finally touching me back. I knew you wanted to."
"That's not—I wasn't—" The words died as she rolled her hips forward, a subtle grinding motion that pressed her pelvis against his thigh and made his brain completely white out for a second.
"God, you're trembling." She sounded absolutely thrilled. "I can feel it everywhere you're touching me. Your hands are shaking so bad." Her fingers traced patterns against his lower back, slow circles that somehow felt obscene despite the layers of fabric between her touch and his skin. "Have you ever been this close to a girl before? Ever?"
The answer was so obviously no that speaking it aloud would be redundant. His complete lack of response was confession enough.
"That's what I thought." She leaned her weight more fully against him, and his spine pressed harder into the bookshelf's edge. The uncomfortable bite of wood digging into his vertebrae was the only thing keeping him grounded in reality. "A total virgin. I could tell from the moment I saw those drawings. The way you sketch women..." She pulled one hand away from his back to gesture vaguely. "It's so obvious you've never actually touched one."
"I don't—that's not—" His voice cracked on the denial.
"It's okay." Her free hand came up to pat his chest in mock comfort. "There's nothing wrong with being a pathetic virgin who doesn't know what to do with a girl's body." The pat turned into a slow drag of her palm down his sternum. "Even if you are a second-year. Even if most guys your age have at least gotten to first base by now."
Heat flooded through him—not just in his face anymore but everywhere. His entire body felt like it was burning up from the inside. The hand on her shoulder tightened involuntarily, fingers digging into the fabric of her uniform.
"Oh?" Her eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "Was that a grip? Are you finally going to do something, Senpai?"
He should push her away. Should find his voice and tell her to stop, to give him space, to leave him alone. Should—
Her hand slid lower, past his sternum, over his abdomen. Not groping, not grabbing—just a slow, deliberate exploration that made every stomach clench. She watched his face the entire time, drinking in each micro-expression of panic and mortification that flickered across his features.
"You're so tense." Her fingers pressed against his stomach through his shirt, finding the concave hollow there. "And so skinny. I can practically feel your ribs." She traced what might have been the outline of his ribcage, and he jerked like she'd applied electric current. "Sensitive too. That's cute."
"Please—" The word finally escaped, thin and reedy.
"Please what?" She tilted her head, that predatory grin never wavering. "Please stop? Please keep going?" Her hand stilled against his abdomen, warm even through the fabric. "You need to be more specific, Senpai. I can't read your mind."
But she could read his body—that much was horrifyingly clear. Could feel the way he shook, the way his breathing had gone shallow and rapid, the way his fingers clutched at her shoulder like a drowning man gripping a life preserver.
"Actually..." Her grin turned thoughtful. "Maybe I don't need you to say anything. Your body's telling me everything I need to know." She pressed her hips forward again, that same grinding motion that had short-circuited his thoughts before. "You like this. You're terrified and embarrassed and you probably want to die right now, but you also like it."
"I don't—"
"Liar." The word came out sing-song. Her hand resumed its exploration, sliding from his stomach to his hip bone, thumb hooking into the waistband of his trousers. Not pulling, not undoing anything—just resting there, a promise of where she could go if she wanted. "If you really hated this, you would've screamed for help by now. Would've made a scene. But you haven't. Which means..."
She leaned up, bringing her lips close to his ear. Her breath ghosted across the shell of it, warm and intimate.
"You want me to keep going."
His response was another strangled noise—denial and admission tangled together into something incomprehensible.
"That's what I thought." She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes, her expression absolutely victorious. "Don't worry, Senpai. I'll take good care of you."
The sensation of her thumb hooked into his waistband, the heat of her body pressed against his, the promise in her voice—it all crashed over Naoto at once. Every nerve in his body fired simultaneously, overloaded past the point of rational thought or measured response.
A sound tore from his throat.
High-pitched. Piercing. Utterly mortifying.
A scream—not the deep-voiced shout of a startled man, but something that climbed octaves into territory that could only be described as feminine. It echoed off the library's vaulted ceiling, bounced between the bookshelves, and seemed to hang in the air long after his lungs emptied to his great embarrassment.
The girl froze. Her eyes went wide.
Then she absolutely lost it.
Laughter exploded from her—not the controlled, mocking chuckles from before, but something completely unrestrained. Her arms fell away from him as she doubled over, hands flying to her sides like she needed to physically hold herself together. The sound that came out was pure cackle, raw and gasping, her shoulders shaking with the force of it.
"Oh my god—" She could barely get the words out between gasps. "That was—that was the most—"
Naoto's brain rebooted.
Run.
The thought arrived with crystal clarity. Her grip had released. She was distracted, vulnerable, completely consumed by her own hysteria. His scattered drawings lay forgotten on the floor—some still in her hands, others scattered across the table and beneath it.
His survival instinct overrode everything else.
He bolted.
His sneakers found purchase against the library floor and he moved, skinny legs pumping with an ungainly desperation he'd perfected over years of fleeing bullies. The bookshelf behind him rattled as he pushed off from it. His bag swung wildly from his shoulder, forgotten drawings crunching under his feet as he ran.
"Wait—Senpai—" Her voice called after him, still strangled with laughter. "Where are you—"
He didn't look back. Couldn't look back. His hands fumbled for the library door, found the handle, yanked it open with enough force to make the hinges squeal. The hallway beyond stretched before him—mostly empty, thank god, just a few students clustered near lockers who barely glanced his way.
His heart hammered against his ribs. His glasses had slipped down his nose again but he didn't dare stop to adjust them. The fluorescent lights overhead blurred into streaks as he ran, his reflection in the windows a pale, panicked thing.
Behind him, he heard the library door swing open again.
"Senpai!" Her voice echoed down the hallway, still laced with amusement. "You forgot your drawings!"
He ran harder. His lungs burned, his legs ached—physical activity had never been his strong suit, and his body was making that abundantly clear—but adrenaline pushed him forward. Past the lockers, around the corner, down another hallway he wasn't even sure led anywhere useful.
A stairwell appeared on his left. He grabbed the railing and hauled himself up the steps two at a time, his bag bouncing against his hip with each leap. The metal stairs rang under his feet, announcing his escape to anyone within earshot.
Second floor. He burst through the door and found himself in an empty corridor he didn't quite recognize. His chest heaved, each breath coming in ragged gasps that made spots dance across his vision. The urge to collapse right there almost overwhelmed him, but he forced himself to keep moving—slower now, but moving.
His shoulder found a wall and he leaned against it, doubling over with his hands on his knees. Sweat dampened his collar, his carefully buttoned shirt now clinging to his skin. His glasses had fogged up completely, rendering the world into soft, indistinct shapes.
Safe. I'm safe. She didn't follow.
His mind caught up with his body's panic response, and the realization of what he'd left behind hit him like a physical blow.
The drawings.
Not all of them—he could feel a few pages crumpled in his bag, grabbed instinctively before he fled—but most of them. The Elizabeth character studies. The action sequences he'd spent hours perfecting. The panel layouts for next week's chapter. All of it scattered across that library table and floor like evidence of his humiliation.
And she still had some. He'd seen them in her hands as he ran, watched her clutching his work even as laughter consumed her.
His stomach twisted. Those drawings represented weeks of effort. Months, if he counted the developmental sketches, the false starts, the studies he'd done to get the proportions right. His entire creative process laid bare for that girl—that crazy, sadistic, unnaturally strong girl—to examine and mock at her leisure.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
He could try to go back. Sneak in when she wasn't there, recover what he could. But the thought of returning to that library, of potentially encountering her again, made his legs feel weak for entirely different reasons than exhaustion.
His breathing gradually steadied. The sweat cooling on his skin made him shiver despite the warmth of the building. He pushed his glasses up with trembling fingers and the world snapped back into focus—an empty hallway, afternoon light streaming through windows at the far end, the distant murmur of a classroom somewhere below.
Her laughter echoed in his skull. That uncontrolled cackling, the way she'd literally had to hold her sides, too consumed by mirth to maintain her grip on him. At least it had given him the opening to escape, but the cost to his dignity—
He realized, with dawning horror, that he didn't even know her name.
All of that. The teasing, the touching, the complete domination of his personal space. The way she'd kissed his tears away and pressed against him and hooked her thumb into his waistband like she owned him. And he didn't have a single identifier for her beyond "first-year girl with tanned skin and terrifying grin."
She knew he was a second-year. Knew where to find him—or at least, knew he frequented the library. Had his drawings, which meant she could probably figure out more about him if she wanted. Meanwhile, he had nothing. Not a name, not a class, nothing except the visceral memory of her warmth and strength and those amber-maroon eyes that had seen him cry.
This is fine, he tried to tell himself. She got what she wanted. Had her fun tormenting me. She probably won't bother seeking me out again.
But even as the thought formed, something in his gut told him otherwise. The way she'd looked at him—like she'd discovered a new toy. The satisfaction in her voice when she'd called him "Senpai" in that obscene way. The casual possessiveness in how she'd trapped him against the bookshelf.
That wasn't the behavior of someone who'd simply stumbled across entertainment and moved on.
Naoto straightened up, his legs still shaky but functional. His reflection stared back at him from a nearby window—pale, disheveled, glasses slightly askew despite his adjustment. The face of someone who'd just had their entire world tilted sideways.
He needed to move. Find somewhere to hide until classes ended. Maybe the roof? No one went up there this late in the day.
His hand closed around the strap of his bag, finding some small comfort in its familiar weight. At least he'd escaped with his sketchbook intact. The loose pages were a loss, but the core of his work remained.
Small victories.
He started walking again, each step taking him further from the library and the crazy first-year who'd turned his afternoon into a waking nightmare. His sneakers squeaked against the polished floor, the sound lonely in the empty hallway.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, beneath the panic and mortification and relief at having escaped, a small voice whispered:
She'll find you again.